Over the course of nine nights, fishing boats shift positions while
hugging the borders of the exclusive economic zones of Argentina and the
Falkland Islands. (Map by NASA Earth Observatory, using VIIRS day-night
band data from Suomi NPP.)One might recall my statements about the abundance of squid and how they were overtaking the fisheries. Well, leave it to heroes in South America to make the most of it and remove the overwhelming number of squid destroying the fisheries.
...Fisheries researchers (click here) and managers suggest that as much as 300,000 tons of Illex squid are harvested from the South Atlantic each year by unlicensed, unregulated fishing vessels. Managing the fishery and monitoring the presence of foreign fishing fleets is very difficult for navies and fisheries managers; the satellite views provide at least some sense of the activity in the area.
“These lights help reveal the full range, patterns, and
night-to-night variability of these fishing activities in striking
detail,” said Steve Miller, a Colorado State University scientist who
works with VIIRS nighttime imagery. “It’s just another example of how
much information exists in night lights measurements and how unique they
are for coupling human activity with the natural environment in a way
that conventional visible imagery cannot do.”
I suppose every nation in the area can seek to own the catch, but, at least there are some willing to work past the border issue and actually find a resolve to help the fisheries remove the over abundance of squid.
Who needs Wall Street?
I suppose every nation in the area can seek to own the catch, but, at least there are some willing to work past the border issue and actually find a resolve to help the fisheries remove the over abundance of squid.
Who needs Wall Street?
Fresh-caught Illex argentinus squid packaged and ready for South American supermarkets.
Source: Supplied
IT glows. It moves. (click here) And it's forming a 300km long spiral pattern
in the South Atlantic . So what exactly is being captured by satellite
cameras over the coast of Argentina?
...Squids (click here) belong to a particularly successful group of mollusks called the cephalopods, which have been around for about 500 million years. Some ancestors of modern-day squids had shells, such as the ammonites,
which ruled the waves 400-65 million years ago. Of those that are still
around, one small group—the nautiluses—has an external shell. The
other—which includes squids, cuttlefishes, and octopods—does not,
although squids and cuttlefishes have an internal, backbone-like support
made of chitin called a pen....
